A short post this week - literally

Revisiting a post on being vertically challenged...

Sunshine ☀️ helps you grow ….

I wrote this post at the beginning of my Substack journey. Unfortunately I haven’t grown anymore.

When I was 11 years old I was by far the tallest in my class. Unfortunately I haven’t grown a centimetre, or even a millimetre, since. The rest of my family were all tall. During my teens, I definitely believed I fell off the back of the milk float. Having done a bit more research, the milk float idea seems a real possibility. According to Medical News Today 80% of our height is determined by genetics. The only person I can think of who was challenged vertically was my grandfather, who was Welsh. When I was three I had two big ambitions to learn Welsh and smoke a pipe like him.

If you are short you hear all the comments like, good things come in small packages - the response was often and so does poison. Being short has definitely posed its challenges over the years, particularly when my overall height is linked to my odd shape, no legs but with a very long body. When John and I were sitting together I was at least an inch taller than him. When we stood up, I went no where and he carried on upwards. Sarah supplemented her height by wearing her mahoosive high heels 👠.

I am going to say it, being short is a pain in so many ways, sometimes literally. For example when trying knock a tin of beans of the shelf with a potato masher and mistiming - not an example of smartness. I remember as a teenager, being with my brother in an exceedingly busy Oxford Street, he’s over 6 foot. We came out of Oxford Circus Tube and he strode off down the road, not understanding why I was lagging behind and sometimes even disappearing. He forgot that with his head in the clouds he could plot a path through the crowds. I just kept bumping into people’s back, chests, knee caps and being hit by swinging shoulder bags, as I tried keep up, but often losing him in the crowd. The quote - “Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.” Veronica Roth, Allegiant - seems very apt at this point.

My feet often don’t touch the ground when I sit in a normal chair, making me feel very, very small. John and I could never find sofas that fitted us both, he had long legs. Old age and low bum height definitely act as barriers to looking sophisticated getting on to a tall bar stool, that’s if I can actually clamber up - not an edifying sight.

There are all the usual annoyances, only buying things on lower shelves in supermarkets, although click & collect has solved that problem, having dogs that can look me in the eye, not being able to get in my loft and finding it hard to reach into the back of my kitchen cupboards without a potato masher. As yet I haven’t really identified any advantages to being small of stature. Hang on one minute, my research has turned something up. In her New York Times, opinion piece, There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be Short, in January this year, Mara Altman found:

On average, short people live longer and have a lower incidence of cancer. One theory suggests this is the case because with fewer cells, there is less likelihood that one goes wrong. I’d take that over dunking a basketball any day. - As it happens so would I, prefer netball anyway.

After my research around the loss little grey cells as we grow older was positive, I wondered if losing inches was a myth too. Off I totter down the rabbit 🐇 warren, to establish some facts ……. creative pause ……. unfortunately, this time, I can’t pull the rabbit out of the hat. According to Ventura Orthopaedics we do shrink:

Men can gradually lose an inch between the ages of 30 to 70, and women can lose about two inches. After the age of 80, it is possible to lose another inch regardless of gender.

Not what I wanted to hear, I am definitely heading downwards and will be under 5ft, very very soon. I could check and see if I am there yet, but just don’t have the heart. At least I am not on my own, I suspect that everyone reading this post is heading in my downward direction. She says extremely smugly with a wicked grin on her face. I wonder how many of us actually have our real height recorded on the our passports. I think I will have to resurrect the height charts we had on the wall for the kids, when they were younger. Unfortunately, now recording another centimetre lost rather than the excitement of yet another centimetre gained.

Is there anything we can do? Let’s start with anyone reaching or having reached their 40s. Australian website Prevention Australia suggests 5 things:

1. Jump to it - loading exercise such as hopping/jumping/skipping ….. I found a skipping rope in amongst some knitting wool a couple of weeks ago …. maybe not

2. Feed your bones - calcium 1000mg for ages 19 - 50, 1300 mg if you’re over 51, cheese, yogurt etc

3. Seek a little sun 🌞 - much easier in Australia and other countries than in the UK - I should now be 6ft tall after all the sun we've had this year

4. Be savvy about what you drink - no cola, alcohol usual advice, but tea 🫖 is good, I do something right then …

5. Less stress - easier said than done at times

But what about people like me who have already grown old. In the Medical News Today article it confirms that we cannot actually gain height, but we can improve how tall we look, by:

• Improving posture

• Strengthening our core muscles

• Eating a nutritious diet

• Taking supplements

• Wearing higher shoes ….. Homer Simpson d’oh moment here and memories of Naomi Campbell’s platform shoes and the clatter of Sarah’s mahoosive shoes - she never rushed - plus my feet are too small for high heels.

• Doing yoga - not good with short stumpy legs

I feel I have to finish this piece with a brilliant quote from Canadian Allan Mott in the BBC article The awfulness - and awesomeness - of being short:

When I look back at some of my prouder achievements, I have to admit these might not have happened if I was just an average guy and not an awesome shrimp.

I, from here on in, will definitely consider myself to be an awesome, if round, shrimp 🦐

Prompts

Would you like to change your height?

What is the best part of the height you are?

What is the worst?